AFL LiveReview

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After four years of waiting, Aussie Rules Football fans finally have a new game to call their own. Does it deliver?

By Daniel Golding

Fans of AFL have had a pretty good few years. Attendance and participation have swelled, and some of the best teams to have ever played the game have emerged. Yet fans of Aussie Rules Football video games have had it tough. In fact, they've always had it tough. Previous AFL games ranged in quality from mediocre to near-unplayable, and the multi-platform franchise was discontinued after 2007. While it was probably a good idea to give the AFL series a rest, it also meant nearly four years without a multi-platform AFL video game. Until now.

AFL Live, the first AFL game developed by Melbourne's Big Ant Studios, is an attempt to breathe some life into the video game form of Australia's most popular football code, and much of the buzz leading up to release suggested that Big Ant might be on to a winner. So does AFL Live deliver, or is it just another disappointment?

Perhaps the biggest question mark surrounding AFL Live is one of gameplay: does AFL Live actually play like a game of football? Well, yes. Sometimes. Matches proceed at a much faster pace than in previous AFL video games, effectively capturing the shift to quicker, handball-based play that has dominated recently. Yet certain quirks of the game, as translated to video game form, mean that AFL Live never quite encapsulates the feeling of a real match, and can sometimes even jolt the player out of the experience.

AFL Live has a very prominent learning curve, and it will be at least a dozen matches before players will begin to fully grasp the game. My first match saw reigning premiers Collingwood smashed by the very average Port Power, and things didn't improve for several matches until I truly understood what was required for victory, even on the easiest difficulty settings.

Dave's basketball-style shooting method wasn't embraced by the rest of his team. In fact, he was beaten to a bloody pulp after the game.

AFL Live pushes a stoppage-dominated version of football, built upon ultra-fast tackling. Breaking free of a pack is difficult, and creating space even more so. Tackles come quickly and numerously, often locking down play for several ball-ups or throw-ins at a time.

Unfortunately, some actions are simply unrealistically hard in AFL Live. Big Ant have imagined a world where players routinely miss running shots at an open goal, and where players can barely sprint without being penalised by umpires for not bouncing. Booting it out of a pack is also near impossible, given the charge time required for any moderately powerful kick.

Therefore, at its worst, AFL Live can feel more like the stop-start flow of Rugby than Aussie Rules. Yet at its best, with good players opening up contested possession with a series of quick handballs, it comes close to the real thing. Players move realistically through packs in order to draw a pass, forwards press for the running lead, and defensive players launch satisfying punches to spoil the mark. There is a solid foundation of gameplay here, and it's almost certainly the best AFL experience we've had in a video game so far. However, AFL Live is still too hit-and-miss to be recommended on gameplay alone.

AFL Live includes a number of nice touches, like umpires tending to throw the ball up rather than bouncing in the wet, and Collingwood and Essendon standing for the anthem on ANZAC Day (although in reality it's the last post that's played, not the national anthem, but hey, you can't have everything). Yet there are also small touches that could have easily been included but are notably absent, like pre-match banners, or the ability to view a replay at any time from the in-game menu. Even the state leagues, like the VFL or WAFL, or a team of all-time greats would have been nice additions, but remain absent.

There are larger omissions as well - a career mode, or a manager mode, or even back-to-back seasons all could have been included, but for a game built from the ground up, it isn't surprising that other aspects were focussed on.

Unfortunately, bigger problems exist with AFL Live than simple omissions. The sound design is unimaginative and insubstantial. Players will have heard virtually all that the commentary from Dennis Cometti and Brian Taylor has to offer within twenty minutes of booting up AFL Live, and what is there fails to impress with an unnatural flow and a frankly amateurish implementation. Matches sound lifeless and without atmosphere: while there are cheers and boos, any form of chanting is completely absent. That means no intimidating slow-and-long Collingwood chant that was so deafening at last year's Grand Finals. No screaming of 'yellow and black' at Richmond matches. An AFL game should be a sound designer's paradise, but you wouldn't know it by playing AFL Live.

On top of this, only two pieces of music ('Holy Grail' by Hunters and Collectors, and 'Last Ones Standing', the Denis Cometti-penned McKenna song) are included in the game - eight minutes of music for every menu, every half-time scoreboard, every replay. Sports games have a high bar for music, and AFL Live pales to absurdity in comparison.

Don't fly too close to the lights little swan.

AFL Live is also a mixed bag in visual terms. The game is presented well, with slick menus and reasonable half and full-time displays. Animations are generally good, with most players moving naturally and convincingly, while likenesses are passable from a distance. Camera angles will always be a problem for any AFL game, and they are particularly sticky for AFL Live. Only a close-up, for example will allow easy manoeuvring through packs, but only a wide-shot will give enough vision for the long pass. Despite offering many different settings to choose from (all variants of close, broadcast and end-to-end), all have their issues and none are particularly satisfying.

Multiplayer is an expected feature of any sports game, and it is an enjoyable facet of AFL Live. Local games can include between two and seven players, and it works about as well as the single-player experience. Online multiplayer is also present, but due to PSN outages we were unable to test it. Team editing and create-a-player modes are reasonable, though they do reveal some strange design choices (Nathan Ablett, a player who has yet to play a game for the league's worst team this year, is ranked a mere six points worse than Scott Pendlebury, a favourite for this year's Brownlow, for example).

The Verdict

Football fans should heed the old cliche of taking each game one week at a time: AFL video games have a strong foundation with AFL Live, but still have a few years of hard work to go before we can expect genuinely great things. In the end, the highest compliment I can pay to AFL Live is that it looks like it has the makings of a potential top-tier franchise. Is AFL Live a great sports video game? No. Does it feel like football? Sometimes. And for those who have been punished by a decade of near-unplayable AFL video games, &#Array;sometimes&#Array; will be enough. The rest should keep an optimistic eye on the future of AFL Live and Big Ant.